Centering Quality, Centering Equity: Lessons Learned in Increasing Early Childhood Educator Credentials

Thriving communities depend on a strong early childhood education system—one where both young children and members of the workforce are served and supported. Some states are changing credential requirements for ECE teachers, but many early childhood educators face significant barriers to economic security and continuing education—all while supporting children, parents, and their communities with specialized education services. Our new report with The Institute for College Access and Success examines the racial equity implications of policies that increase credential requirements for ECE jobs. Featuring case studies of California and Washington, D.C., the report offers policy ideas for protecting educators and advancing racial and economic equity, including flexibility and support for incumbent workers, wage increases, and low-cost options for obtaining new credentials.

Laying New Foundations: An Anti-Racist Framework for Reimagining Medicaid, CHIP, TANF, & CCDF

Everyone deserves the opportunity to lead a healthy, stable, and economically secure life. Many government programs aim to provide a stable foundation for all families, but fall short due to legacies of racism. This report puts forth a visionary framework with principles for anti-racist policymaking, focusing on Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). It includes three spotlights from leaders in Puerto Rico, Texas, and the District of Columbia applying these principles to advance racial and economic justice in their communities.

More Lessons Learned From 50 Years of Subsidized Employment Programs: An Updated Review of Models

Subsidized employment is an engine for economic opportunity, stronger labor markets, and healthier communities. It can mitigate structural barriers to work, such as racial discrimination in the labor market, and be adapted and scaled to meet specific worker, employer, and community needs. This report reviews a half-century of evidence on subsidized employment’s power to increase employment and incomes, reduce poverty, and ensure a more inclusive economy for everyone. It is the second edition of a 2016 report, “Lessons Learned from 40 Years of Subsidized Employment Programs.”

Re-Envisioning Medicaid & CHIP as Anti-Racist Programs

Racial and ethnic disparities in the health care system have long impeded our nation’s health and well-being. For everyone in the U.S. to achieve their full potential—and for our nation to achieve its full potential—we must ensure equitable access to high-quality health care. This report presents an anti-racist re-imagining of the Medicaid and CHIP programs that actively reckons with the racist history of health care coverage. The report offers recommendations to advance racial equity in Medicaid and CHIP. It also provides principles to guide anti-racist policy transformations that center program participants and their communities.

Advancing American Indian & Alaska Native Data Equity: Representation in Federal Data Collections

The United States must improve its data collection efforts in order to ensure equitable representation of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations. Inequitable data have deep and pervasive impacts on American social, political, and economic systems. The current lack of accurate, reliable, and sufficiently detailed data risks making AI/AN peoples invisible to policymakers and reinforcing existing dynamics of marginalization. This report explores the history of AI/AN data in federal data collections, describes some nuances of working with AI/AN population data, and highlights the undercounting and underrepresentation of AI/AN populations in federal data collections. It also recommends proposed changes to data collection to increase equitable representation for AI/AN populations, which must be done in consultation with Tribal Nations in accordance with tribal sovereignty.

Re-Envisioning TANF: Toward an Anti-Racist Program That Meaningfully Serves Families

An America where no one experiences poverty is possible. Already, the U.S. has programs with the potential to make this vision a reality, including programs that provide cash assistance, like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The current TANF program provides very little cash assistance and is marked by stark racial disparities, but it has the potential to reduce child poverty, increase economic security, and advance racial equity. This report offers a vision for an anti-racist approach to the TANF program, with new statutory goals and policy recommendations to advance racial justice.

Equity Through Engagement

To advance child health equity in California, The Children’s Partnership, the California Children’s Trust, and the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality launched The Equity Through Engagement (ETE) project. This project examines opportunities to integrate community partnerships and interventions into California’s Medi-Cal financing and delivery systems to advance child health equity, including through addressing social drivers of health (SDOHs). 

From Exclusion to Opportunity: The Role of Postsecondary Education in Labor Force Segregation & Recommendations for Action

A four-year postsecondary degree offers opportunities for a higher income and upward economic mobility. However, postsecondary education—historically inaccessible to people of color and women—also plays a key role in reproducing and amplifying societal inequities by sorting students into specialized fields of study by race and gender, contributing to a segregated labor force. This report examines the link between postsecondary field of study and labor market segregation using an original quantitative analysis. This report presents four principles and corresponding recommendations that postsecondary institutions and policymakers can use to reduce racial and gender segregation across fields of study, increase degree attainment, and ultimately, ameliorate labor market segregation.

A Growing Problem: How Market Power in Agriculture Fuels Racial & Economic Inequality

Market power and corporate consolidation have increased in recent decades, concentrating economic and political power among fewer corporations across the country. This report examines the implications of market power in the agricultural sector–particularly in crop production, animal production, and animal slaughtering. Market power, deeply intertwined with economic inequality and structural racism, contributes to low pay, dangerous working conditions, and other harms to workers of color.

Concentrated Power, Concentrated Harm: Market Power’s Role in Creating & Amplifying Racial & Economic Inequality

Market power exists when one or more companies can profitably set prices for goods, services, and wages; and determine the quality, accessibility, and availability of goods and services. Market power, intertwined with deeply entrenched structural racism and class inequality, can have life-or-death consequences. This report explores the real-world impact of market power on the lives of people of color and people with low incomes–as workers, consumers, and entrepreneurs–their communities, and society at large. The research shows that market power contributes to economic insecurity and hardship in low-income communities and communities of color, including by driving down wages and benefits; limiting and controlling the availability of goods, services, and jobs; and undermining American prosperity and democracy.